1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to communications systems, and more particularly to the dynamic allocation of hardware and firmware resources to system applications based on a best fit of an application hardware resource specification to available hardware resources.
2. Description of Related Art
A conventional multiple-channel communications system includes a relatively fixed hardware configuration that supports software applications each having embedded, or hardcoded, knowledge of the hardware configuration. Because the software applications are tied to the underlying hardware configuration, the applications are not readily portable to new hardware configurations and must typically be updated when the hardware configuration is modified. These limitations are amplified in large distributed applications in which application resources may have special proximity and connectivity constraints. As a result, hardware resources are often inefficiently allocated on a first available basis rather than on a best-fit basis.